Mary Hartwell Catherwood

“ Whenever, in our own day, we see the Kankakee still gliding along its rocky bed, or the solemn Illinois spreading betwixt wooded banks, it is easy to imagine a birch canoe just appearing around a bend, carrying La Salle or Tonty, and rowed by buckskin-clad voyageurs. On the Kankakee thousands of buffaloes filled the plains, and La Salle's party killed many, preparing the flesh in dried flakes by smoking it. ”

“ The 17th of May, 1673, Father Jacques Marquette, the missionary priest of St. Ignace, on what is now called the north shore of Michigan, and Louis Jolliet, a trader from Montreal, set out on a journey together.
Huron and Ottawa Indians, with the priest left in charge of them, stood on the beach to see Marquette embark,—the water running up to their feet and receding with the everlasting wash of the straits. Behind them the shore line of St. Ignace was bent like a long bow. Northward, beyond the end of the bow, a rock rose in the air as tall as a castle. ”

“ The young English trader, Alexander Henry, has left a careful account of the massacre at Fort Michilimackinac. He did not go out to see the ball game, because he had important letters to write and send by a canoe just starting to Canada. Officers and men, believing the red tribes friendly, lounged about unarmed. Whitewashed French houses shone in the sun, and the surge [131] of the straits sounded peacefully on the beach. Nobody could dream that when the shouting Indians drove the ball back from the farthest stake, their cries would suddenly change to war whoops. ”

“ Young squaws and braves who were to sing, sat down on the ground in a group near the mat; but the multitude spread in a great circle around it. Men of importance before taking their seats on the short grass, each in turn lifted the calumet, which was filled, and blew a little [30] smoke on the manitou. Then the dancer sprang out, and, with graceful curvings in time to the music, seized the pipe and offered it now to the sun and now to the earth, made it dance from mouth to mouth along the lines of spectators, with all its fluttering plumes spread. ”

“ It was a lovely broad river on which they now embarked, with shining sands showing through the clear water, making shallows like tumbling discs of brilliant metal,—a river in which the canoes might sometimes run aground, but one that deceived the eye pleasantly, with islands all vine covered, so when a boat clove a way between two it was a guess how far the Wisconsin spread away on each side to shores of a fertile land. Oaks, walnuts, whitewood, and thorn trees crowded the banks or fell apart, showing prairies rolling to wooded hills. ”

“ Having crossed the river and reached the prairie, Tonty and his allies saw the Iroquois. They came prancing and screeching on their savage march, and would have been ridiculous if they had not been appalling. These Hodenosaunee, or People of the Long House, as they [65] called themselves, were the most terrible force in the New World. Tonty saw at once it would go hard with the Illinois nation. Never at any time as hardy as their invaders, who by frequent attacks had broken their courage, and weakened by the absence of their best warriors, they wavered in their first charge. ”

“ This attractive creature sent the Indian crier around, beating a drum of deer hide stretched over a pot, to proclaim the calumet dance in honor of the explorers.
Marquette and Jolliet were led out in the prairie to a small grove which sheltered the assembly from the afternoon sun. Even the women left their maize fields and the beans, melons, and squashes that they were cultivating, and old squaws dropped rush braiding, and with papooses swarming about their knees, followed. The Illinois were nimble, well-formed people, skillful with bow and arrow. ”

“ The explorers, seeing nothing of men, gave more attention to birds and animals. Wild turkeys with burnished necks and breasts tempted the hunters. The stag uttered far off his whistling call of defiance to other stags. And they began to see a shaggy ox, humped, with an enormous head and short black horns, and a mane hanging over low-set wicked eyes. Its body was covered with curly rough hair. They learned afterwards from Indians to call these savage cattle pisikious, or buffaloes. Herds of many hundreds grazed together, or, startled, galloped away, like thunder rolling along the ground. ”

“ With gifts and the grave consideration which instantly won Indians, La Salle moved from tribe to tribe towards the Gulf. Red River pulsed upon the course like a discharging artery. The sluggish alligator woke from the ooze and poked up his snout at the canoes. "He is," says a quaint old writer who made that journey afterwards, "the most frightful master-fish that can be seen. I saw one that was as large as half a hogshead. There are some, they say, as large as [91] a hogshead and twelve to fifteen feet long. I have no doubt they would swallow up a man if they caught him." ”

“ In those days when each man took his individual life in his hands and guarded it in ways which seemed best to him, it was often expedient to change one's plan of action. About the time that Tonty was obliged to abandon Fort Crèvecœur, Hennepin and his companions set off eastward with Greysolon du Lhut's party. Hennepin sailed for France as soon as he could and wrote a book about his adventures. It was one of La Salle's misfortunes that this friar should finally even lay claim to discovering the mouth of the Mississippi, adding the glory of that to these real adventures on its upper waters. ”

“ So slowly did events move then, and so powerless was man, an atom in the wilderness, [104] that the great-hearted Italian, weeping aloud in rage and grief, realized that La Salle's bones had been bleaching a year and a half before the news of his death reached his lieutenant. It was not known that La Salle received burial. The wretches who assassinated him threw him into some brush. It was a satisfaction to Tonty that they all perished miserably afterwards; those who survived quarrels among themselves being killed by the Indians. ”

“ For by this time, so long did it take to cover distances in the wilderness, spring and summer were past, and the Illinois were dwelling in their great town, nearly opposite the rock which La Salle desired to have fortified. Tonty often [59] gazed at it across the river, which flows southwestward there, with a ripple that does not break into actual rapids. The yellow sandstone height, rising like a square mountain out of the shore, was tufted with ferns and trees. No man could ascend it except at the southeast corner, and at that place a ladder or a rope was needed by the unskillful. ”

“ Father Hennepin was given to Aquipaguetin, who promptly adopted him as a son. The Flemish friar saw with disgust his gold-embroidered vestments, which a missionary always carried with him for the impressive celebration of mass, displayed on savage backs and greatly admired.
The explorers were really in the way of seeing as much of the upper Mississippi as they could desire. They were far north of the Wisconsin's mouth, where white men first entered the great river. The young Mississippi, clear as a mountain stream, gathered many small tributaries. ”

“ The Indians, after their first fierce onset, fighting in their own way, behind trees and sheltered by buildings outside the fort, were able to besiege the place indefinitely with comparatively small loss to themselves; while the garrison, shut in almost without warning, looked forward to scarcity of provisions.
All English people caught beyond the walls were instantly murdered. But the French settlers were allowed to go about their usual affairs unhurt. Queer traditions have come down from them of the pious burial they gave to English victims of the Indians. ”

“ Marquette and Jolliet taking turns with them as the [7] day progressed. For any man, whether voyageur, priest, or seignior, who did not know how to paddle a canoe, if occasion demanded, was at sore disadvantage in the New World.
The first day of any journey, before one meets weariness or anxiety and disappointment, remains always the freshest in memory. When the sun went down, leaving violet shadows on the chill lake, they drew their boats on shore; and Pierre Porteret and another Frenchman, named Jacques, gathered driftwood to make a fire, while the rest of the crew unpacked the cargo. ”

“ Through the entire summer Pontiac was successful in everything except the taking of Detroit. He besieged it from May until October. With autumn his hopes began to dwindle. He had asked the French to help him, and refused to believe that their king had made a treaty at Paris, giving up to the English all [136] French claims in the New World east of the Mississippi. His cause was lost. He could band unstable warriors together for a common good, but he could not control politics in Europe, nor defend a people given up by their sovereign, against the solidly advancing English race. ”

“ About ten o'clock Pontiac and his chiefs crossed the river in birch canoes and stalked in Indian file, every man stepping in the tracks of the man before him, to the fort gates. The gates on the water side usually stood open until evening, for the English, contemptuously careless of savages, let squaws and warriors come and go at pleasure. ”

“ A dozen or twenty roving savages, ready to pounce like ferocious wildcats on a camp, always peeled white places on the trees, and cut pictures there of their totem, or tribe mark, and the scalps and prisoners they had taken. They respected a company more numerous than themselves, and avoided it.
Stopping to nurse the sick when some fell ill of exposure, or to build canoes when canoes were needed, La Salle did not reach Fort Niagara until Easter, and it was May when Fort Frontenac came into view.
No man ever suffered more from treachery. ”

“ Lieutenant Frazer descended the Ohio. Pontiac caught him and shipped him to New Orleans by canoe. Captain Croghan was also stopped near Detroit. Both French and Spanish people roared with laughter at the many failures of the coming race to seize what had so easily been obtained by treaty.
Two years and a half passed between Pontiac's attack on Detroit and the formal surrender of Fort Chartres. The great war chief's heart, with a gradual breaking, finally yielded before the steadily advancing and all-conquering people that were to dominate this continent. ”

“ Pontiac grinned. "The belts are more than one man can carry."
"Where does the chief intend to go when he leaves this post?"
Pontiac lifted his hand and pointed east, west, north, south. He would have no settled abode. It was a sign that he relinquished the inheritance of his fathers to an invader he hated. His race could not live under the civilization of the Anglo-Saxon. He would have struck out [141] to the remotest wilderness, had he foreseen to what a burial place his continual clinging to the French would bring him. ”

“ La Salle had learned from the Iroquois about the Ohio River. But the region through which it flowed to the Mississippi remained for a long while an unbroken wilderness. The English settlements on their strip of Atlantic coast, however, and the French settlements in the west, reached gradually out over this territory and met and grappled. Whichever power got and kept the mastery of the west would get the mastery of the continent.
The territory of Kentucky, like that of Michigan, was owned by no tribe of Indians. ”

“ About a hundred and twenty English soldiers, besides fur traders and Canadian settlers, were in this inclosure, which was called the fort, to distinguish it from the village of French houses up and down the shore. Dwellers outside had their own gardens and orchards, also surrounded by pickets. These French people, who tried to live comfortably among the English, whom they liked no better than the Indians did, raised fine pears and apples and made wine of the wild grapes. ”

“ In the center of an open space, which the camp-fires were built to illuminate, a painted post was driven into the ground, and the warriors formed a large ring around it. Their moccasined feet kept time to the booming of the drums. With a flourish of his hatchet around his head, a chief leaped into the ring and began to chase an imaginary foe, chanting his own deeds and those of his forefathers. ”

“ The French were not anxious to obtain grants of the rich wild land. Every settlement had its common field, large or small, as was desired. A portion of this field was given to each person in the village for his own, and he was obliged to cultivate it and raise food for his family. If a man neglected his ground, it was taken from him. A large tract of land called the common pasture was also inclosed for everybody's cattle to graze in.
Sometimes houses were set facing one court, or center, like a camp, for defense. ”

“ A delicious salty air, like the breath of perpetual spring, blew in, tingling the skin of the sulkiest adventurer with delight in this virgin world. Fierce northers must beat upon the colonists, and the languors of summer must in time follow ”

“ The Chickasaws, occupying a tract of country now stretching across northern Mississippi and western Tennessee, were friendly to the English and willing to encroach on the French. They interrupted river traffic and practiced [115] every cruelty on their prisoners. D'Artaguette knew as well as the early explorers that in dealing with savages it is a fatal policy to overlook or excuse their ill-behavior. They themselves believed in exact revenge, and despised a foe who did not strike back, their insolence becoming boundless if not curbed. ”

“ La Salle never sat and brooded over trouble. He was a man of action. Shut in with his men and goods, and obliged to wait until spring permitted him to take the next step, he began at once to work on Indian hunters, and to draw their tribes towards forming a settlement around the rock he meant to fortify on the Illinois. Had he been able to attach turbulent voyageurs to him as he attached native tribes, his heroic life would have ended in success even beyond his dreams. Tonty could better deal with ignorant men, his military training standing him in good stead ”

“ All these Indians hated the English. Some came to the fort and said to a young English trader named Alexander Henry, who arrived after the white flag was hauled down and the red one about to be hoisted:—
"Englishman, although you have conquered the French, you have not conquered us. We are not your slaves. These lakes, these woods and mountains were left to us by our ancestors. They are our inheritance, and we will part with them to none!"
Though these Ottawas and Chippewas were [130] independent of those about Detroit, they had eagerly taken hold of Pontiac's war belt. ”

“ The White Flag of France.
The Indians did not like the English, who treated them with contempt, would not offer them presents, and put them in danger of starvation by holding back the guns and ammunition, on which they had learned to depend, instead of their bows and arrows. For two years they had borne the rapid spread of English settlements on land which they still regarded as their own. These intruders were not like the French, who cared nothing about claiming land, and were always ready to hunt or dance with their red brethren. ”

“ Let any one who thinks it an easy task attempt to cover the French discovery and occupation of the middle west, from Marquette and Jolliet to the pulling down of the French flag on Fort Chartres, vivifying men, and while condensing events, putting a moving picture before the eye. ”

“ La Salle asked for two ships; the king gave him four; and many people and supplies were gathered to colonize and stock the west.
It was La Salle's intention to sail by way of the West Indies, cross the Gulf of Mexico, and enter the mouth of the Mississippi. But the Gulf of Mexico is rimmed with low marshy land, and he had never seen the mouth of the Mississippi from seaward. His unfamiliarity with the coast, or night, or fog cheated him of his destination, and the colony was landed four hundred miles west of it, in a place called Matagorda Bay, in Texas, which then belonged to the Spaniards. ”